Walls and Hearts
by mrnaylor930
Summary: Tumblr Prompt: Josh comes home to find a distraught Kate in the midst of a panic attack and has no idea how to calm her down. There's really only one person who can, so he calls in reinforcements in the form of Castle.
**Prompt: Okay how about this Kate still with Josh and she comes home from a hard case and start sobbing & won't stop. Josh can't do anything & calls Castle cause he realises that only castle can make her stop. Kinda like that science in GA where Derek can't get Meredith to stop crying so he takes her to Cristina. Please and thank you**

Josh loved his job, he really did. He loved the traveling that he got to do, he loved the people he got to help, and honestly, he loved being at the top of his field. What he didn't love was coming home after a double shift. He never felt it when he was working, there was too much going on, but after the fact, it was like having a hangover every time.

"Kate," He called as he came into her apartment. He normally went home after such a long shift and caught up with his girlfriend after sleeping for a significant amount of time, but it had been almost two weeks since they had had anything more than a phone conversation. Both of their schedules were crazy, but it worked for them. Neither of them were the cuddly, clingy, jump off the deep end together type. He was actually beginning to think that this could work for the long term.

He moved farther into her apartment, but his girlfriend was nowhere to be found.

"Kate." He tried again.

That's when he heard it. It was soft, he could barely hear it from his place in the kitchen, but it was definitely there. As he moved into the living room the sound erupted into a full on sob.

"Kate!" He yelled, afraid that something was very wrong.

What he saw when he rounded the corner shocked him, to say the least. He never saw Kate anything but was Detective Kate Beckett, the woman he thought was made of steel, curled up on the floor of her office sobbing like a child. He had never seen her like this, nothing even close. He had never seen her cry, never seen her scared or vulnerable.

Early on in their relationship he had thought that she was just a guarded person, that she had built up walls, and eventually he would be let in. As time went on, the walls remained erect and he was convinced that was just who she was. She was a cop. He had heard countless stories of her picking apart the toughest of criminals. She wasn't like other girls who acted heartbroken when he wasn't around or he didn't respond to their every beck and call. He liked that about her. It made her an even better choice for him.

What he was seeing right now on her office floor, told a whole different story. The walls were strong, but they weren't impenetrable.

He took a tentative step toward where his girlfriend lay. "Kate?" He said softly.

She looked up, but her eyes were wild. There was a faintly glassy tint to them and she didn't meet his eyes or even look far enough up to reach his face.

If he didn't know any better he would say she was having a panic attack. These were common at the hospital and he was sure it was just brought on by stress. He remembered her texting him to cancel a date a couple days ago, she had said she was swamped at the precinct and he had understood.

He immediately went into doctor mode. Identify the symptoms and fix them.

"Kate, I need you to look at me, can you do that?" Her sobs just got worse, she was shaking her head back and forth, almost violently.

"Kate. You need to try and calm down, okay, this isn't healthy" He made his voice as soft as possible. He crouched down beside her and catalogued her erratic breathing. "You're going to go into shock if you can't breath."

"Hey." He began again, reaching out to lay a comforting hand on her arm. She jerked away and curled in on herself even more. Her head kept shaking and her cries got louder and more out of control.

"Kate, you need to calm down. Breath. Just breath. We can talk about what has got you upset. I can help you, but you need to calm down first. We're going to have to go to the hospital if you can't breath." At the mention of the hospital things went from worse to even worse. He was at a complete loss. She wasn't hearing him. She wasn't thinking rationally. What in the world had happened to her? He was really worried, but at least she didn't appear hurt. There weren't any gaping wounds and she wasn't in physical pain, this was all in her heart. He had been a doctor long enough to know the difference.

He was a cardiac surgeon, and he knew better than anyone that the heart was a tricky organ. There was no way to fix it without going to the inside. There was no topical cream or pill that would help. Josh had never seen a heart he couldn't fix, until today. The problem, he realized, was that he wasn't in her heart, he had never gotten past those walls. And before today he didn't think there was any need to, he was comfortable on the outside of her walls, where he could come and go as he pleased and there was no relying on one another. Now he was rethinking that decision.

He tried for another ten minutes. It had been a long time since he had a patient who needed this kind of treatment and he would be the first to admit that he was rusty. He tried everything he could to calm her down. He offered water, he tried to dramatize his breathing for her to follow, he tried leaving her in the room for a minute, everything he could think of, and nothing worked. In fact, it just got worse every time he tried to talk to her or come near her. He was running out of patience and of ideas.

Finally, he sat down against the wall opposite her and sighed. He had never really been in her office. It wasn't a room she used often, especially when he was around. There wasn't much to it really, and it struck him as odd that this is where she was.

He was trying to figure out how he was going to get her to the hospital, or how to get some sedatives and oxygen here when she spoke through her hiccuping sobs.

At first he didn't understand. It was quiet and in between her breathless sobs.

"Mom...Castle….please….no…...Castle…..need….Castle….Mom." She wasn't making sense, but this was the first clue he had gotten to her pain.

She had told him that her mother had died when she was younger. She had been murdered, but she hadn't gone into any details and he didn't ask. It had been a long time ago and she didn't talk about it much, he was sure she had made peace with it long before. It was just one of the many things they didn't talk about.

Castle he knew about, and Castle he could give her. At this point he wasn't even thinking about how much he disliked the man he had heard so much about, the only thing he wanted was for this to be over. He wanted to get on with their quiet evening in and forget about his insufficiencies when it came to caring for his girlfriend. So without even thinking about it he picked up her phone, which had been discarded on the floor long before, and pressed the writer's number, trying to ignore the fact that there is a speed dial assigned to his name that is at least 2 numbers above his.

He typed out a quick message and then sat back to wait.

KBKBKBKBKBKBKB

Josh didn't have to wait long. He wasn't sure how the writer had gotten to them so fast, but he didn't even think it had been five minutes until he was opening the door to let him in. There wasn't even the exchange of pleasantries he simply let him in and Castle followed the sounds of Kate straight to the office.

Josh hung back and watched the scene unfold in front of him.

KBKBKBKBKBKBKBKBK

Castle had already been on the way over to Kate's apartment when Josh had sent the message from her phone. He had asked about Josh during one of the extremely short lunch breaks he had forced on her when they began running in circles. She had shrugged it off, but he could see the sadness and stress in her eyes.

He remembered their little chat about her relationship when they had been quarantined. He wanted nothing more than to tell her that he could be everything she wanted. He would gladly dive into it with her. He would love her like she deserved to be loved and he would treasure her for the rest of his life.

The lonely look in her eyes had haunted him for the rest of the day, and it had only gotten worse after that. The case they were working had been horrible. All murders were horrible, but this one opened old wounds and cut deep. A working mother with two young kids had been gunned down in the street in broad daylight.

In true New York fashion no one saw or heard anything. There was no physical evidence, slugs had been clean and there were no fingerprints anywhere. They had scoured their brains for a week and a half, working every lead until they all ended in dead ends.

Montgomery had come down with the order to shut it down just an hour before and Castle would never forget the look he saw on Kate Beckett's face as she fought the order. She had all but screamed at the Captain, trying everything to keep the case opened, but he hadn't budged. He had even mandated three days off for the team to clear their heads. It was a wonder that she wasn't suspended for speaking to a superior that way, but he saw a bit of understanding in Montgomery's eyes.

He knew that she wasn't okay. He had given her an hour to be alone and then he was coming to her. He knew there wasn't a lot he could do for her, he couldn't bring justice to that family, or to her own. But maybe not having to be alone would help her make it through the evening without retreating too far inside herself.

The text had just alerted him to how far gone she was and prompted him to offer his driver double his pay to get him to his destination in less than five minutes. He had run up the stairs three at a time, too impatient to wait for the lift.

He didn't mean to be rude at the door, but his mind was only on Kate. He just needed to get to her, just needed to help her. Dr. Motorcycle boy could wait.

His heart threatened to shatter at the site of Kate Beckett cowering on the floor of her office. He knew she was in here to look at the murderboard she had set up, but it wasn't even opened, she hadn't even made it that far.

He rushed to her side. She looked so small, curled around herself against the wall. Her makeup was long gone, cried off in the midst of her attack and her hair was stuck to the side of her head, but nothing could dull her beauty.

"Oh, Kate." He breathed out when he was solidly on his knees beside her. Her eyes fluttered open, not really focusing on anything around her.

"Cassle?" She mumbled under her breath.

"I'm here, Kate." She sucked in a gasp. He noticed her erratic breathing and he was sure that if she had any tears left she would be sobbing. "Hey, Kate. I'm going to take your hand, alright? I'm going to help me, but you have to let me okay?"

When he reached for her hand, she struggled away, but he persisted. She resisted against him in every part of her life and he knew that persistence was the only way to get past her famous walls. He took her hand firmly and placed it on his chest. He breathed deeply in and out while rubbing soothing patterns on her hand.

With his other hand he lifted her chin and forced her to look up into his face. Her eyes were still unfocused, but as soon as she came back to herself, he wanted her to know that he was here and she was safe.

It took far too long, in his opinion, for her breathing to begin to normalize. Her eyes slowly began to focus on his face and their beautiful deep green was restored.

Once her eyes were fully focused he dropped the hand under her chin and swept the hair out of her face, letting it rest behind her ears.

"Hi." He said softly. Unsure of what to say. Unsure of what she needed to hear.

Her face remained blank for a split second before she surged at him. Her arms tightened around him and her grip was like iron. He sat back and pulled her into him so she sat across his lap. He blamed her lack of inhibitions on the exhaustion he was sure was running through her veins.

She didn't cry, there had been too much of that already, but her head came to rest heavily in the crook of his neck.

"I failed." She whispered, so quiet he almost missed it. "I failed those kids, Castle. They'll grow up without their mother for no good reason!" He was sure there was more, but he cut her off.

"No, Kate. Never, never. You didn't fail those kids. The man with the gun did. There was nothing more you could have done. You honored their mother's memory, by fighting for her. Just like you did with your mother." She tensed at the mention of her own mother.

"We'll get them, Beckett. Not today, not tomorrow, but their day is coming. We're getting close. We'll get there." She began shaking now, out of grief and exhaustion no doubt. "Shh, shh, Kate. It's okay."

He stroked her hair and continued to whisper reassurances into her ear. Slowly, she relaxed, letting him take all of her weight.

"Thanks, Castle. For being here." He breathed a sigh of relief. He knew she would probably never acknowledge that this had happened, so it was good to know that she was okay that he swooped in to help.

That was enough for him, but that wasn't all she had to say. "I really do need you here."

He was floored by this admission and was suddenly aware of Josh's presence in the doorway. At the moment, he couldn't bring himself to care. He simply held a sleeping Kate against him, savouring the feeling for as long as he could.

KBKBKBKBKBBK

Josh watched it all unfold from the doorway. The writer expertly handled his girlfriend and calmed her down quickly. He tried to reason that she was coming out of it anyway, it had been going on long enough already. But deep down, he knew it was just as much about Castle's presence as it was about anything else.

He saw now that he was wrong. She did need someone to be there for her, she did need someone's full attention, someone's unconditional and all consuming love, and one hundred percent of their effort. And by the looks of it, she already had it.

 **Thank you for reading! I would love to hear what you thought!**

 **If you have any prompts feel free to send them my way ( .com)**


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